Manuel Mata

Blackstone Engineering Task Force

NASA Headquarters
Langley Research Center
Brianna’s Room

President Eisenhower and His Advisors

The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Ave
Washington, DC 20500

February 9, 2018

Dear President Eisenhower and His Advisors,

First of all, I wanted to thank you Mr. President for the opportunity and funding you provided me and
my group for the design of the re-entry capsule for Friendship 7. I will be going through our successful design
of the capule explaining why we chose the materials we chose. As well as why this design worked compared to
our first.
So for our final design we had a box and inside we created a cradle with tape for the egg. We did this
by having the the egg suspended inside the box as we had tape go across the box and the egg in the middle.
We decided on this because this way the egg wouldn’t feel any of the impact when we dropped the box. We
used the impact equation to decide how much mass we wanted because the less mass meant the less force of
impact. During the redesign we completely scrapped the last idea as that didn’t work. This design was made
around the idea of keeping the egg from feeling any of the force of impact. Since we had money left the only
thing I would change is taking off the balloon that was wrapped around the egg as it didn’t provide much to
the success of the design to lessen mass and cost of the design.
The constraints we had were that the design couldn’t be more than 500g and cost more than $1
million. Our design was well inside those constraints as it had a mass of 203g and it only cost us $267,000,
$100,000 for the box, $117,000 for tape we used and $50,000 for the balloon. We had $733,000 left over. and
we were 297g under the limit.
To finish I wanted to thank you again Mr. President and all you advisors for this opportunity and
funding for our design.

Sincerely,
Manuel Mata
BACS Engineer

Budget
Material Quantity Cost
Box 1 $100,000
Tape 39in $117,000
Balloon 1 $50,000
TOTAL COST: $267,000
TOTAL COST: $267,000
Original Design
Picture of Design Predicted Velocity Upon Impact (assuming a 4-
meter drop and no air resistance)

Minimum Cushioning Time Calculation Based on

Predicted Velocity Upon Impact
Note: A force of 25 Newtons will break an egg.

Justification of Design (at least 2 sentences) Experimentally-Determined Velocity Upon Impact:

Experimentally-Determined Cushioning Time:

Force of Impact Based on Experimentally-

Determined Velocity Upon Impact:
Mass of Egg Capsule (Containing Egg)

Force of Gravity Acting on Egg Capsule

Were you successful in protecting your (egg) pilot? Why or why not?
Final Design
Picture of Design Predicted Velocity Upon Impact (assuming a 6-
meter drop and no air resistance)

Minimum Cushioning Time Calculation Based on

Predicted Velocity Upon Impact
Note: A force of 25 Newtons will break an egg.

Justification of Design (at least 2 sentences) Experimentally-Determined Velocity Upon Impact:

Experimentally-Determined Cushioning Time:

Force of Impact Based on Experimentally-

Determined Velocity Upon Impact:
Mass of Egg Capsule (Containing Egg)

Force of Gravity Acting on Egg Capsule

Were you successful in protecting your (egg) pilot? Why or why not?
Energy Analysis
Height of Fall:

Location in Fall Energy Pie Chart Potential Energy Kinetic Energy Total Velocity of Egg
Mechanical Capsule
Energy
Top (6 meters
above ground)

1/3 of the way

down (4
meters above
ground)

2/3 of the way

down (2
meters above
ground)

Bottom
(Ground level)